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THE TRAVELLER,

OR

A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY:

A POEM.

FIRST PRINTED IN M,DCC,LXV.

TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

DEAR SIR,

I AM fenfible that the friendship between us can

acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a dedication; and perhaps it demands an excufe thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only infcribed to you. It will alfo throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands, that it is addreffed to a man, who defpifing fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obfcurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.

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I now perceive, my dear brother, the wiflom of humble choice. You have entered upon a facred office, where the Earveft is great, and the labourers are few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times, from different fyftems of criticism, and from the divifions of party, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildeft.

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, painting and mufic come in for a fhare. As thefe offer the feeble mind a lefs laborious entertainment, they at first rival poetry, and at length fupplant her; they engross all that favour once fewn to her, and, though but younger fifters, feize upon the elder's birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the miftaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticifims have we not heard of late in favour of blank verfe, and Pindaric odes, choruffes, anapests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every abfurdity has now a champion

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to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, fo he has always much to fay; for error is ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous, I mean Party. Party entirely diftorts the judgment and deftroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tyger, that feldom defifts from pursuing man, after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader, who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes, ever after, the moft agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire fome half witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having loft the character of a wife one. Him they dignify with the name of poet; his tawdry lampoons are called fatires; his turbulence is faid to be force, and his phrenzy fire.

What reception a poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verfe to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I folicitous to know. My aims are right. Without efpoufing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to fhew, that there' may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed

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governed from our own; that every state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few can judge better than yourself how far thefe pofitions are illuftrated in this poem.

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I am, Dear Sir,

Your most affectionate Brother,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

THE TRAVELLER.

REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, flow,
Or by the lazy Scheld, or wand'ring Po;
Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger fhuts the door;
Or where Campania's plain forfaken lies,
A weary wafte expanding to the skies ;
Where'er I roam, whatever realms to fee,
My heart untravell'd fondly turns to thee;
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a length'ning chain.

;

Eternal bleffings crown my earliest friend,
And round his dwelling guardian faints attend;
Bleft be that spot, where chearful guests retire
To paufe from toil, and trim their ev`ning fire
Bleft that abode, where want and pain repair,
And ev'ry stranger finds a ready chair;
Bleft be thofe feafts, with fimple plenty crown'd,
Where all the ruddy family around

Laugh at the jefts or pranks that never fail,
Or figh with pity at some mournful tale ;
Or prefs the bashful stranger to his food,
And learn the luxury of doing good.

But

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